Today in Korean history

Jan. 19

1946 -- Rightist and leftist Korean students clash over whether the Korean Peninsula should be placed under a U.N. trusteeship.

1949 -- The South Korean government applies for membership in the U.N.

1967 -- A South Korean patrol boat is sunk by artillery fired by the North Korean army while protecting South Korean fishing boats operating near the inter-Korean maritime border in the East Sea.

1979 -- South Korean President Park Chung-hee calls for inter-Korean dialogue during a press conference for the new year.

1994 -- James Woolsey, the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, makes a secret visit to Seoul for talks with South Korean President Kim Young-sam on ways to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons.

2004 -- North Korea proposes an inter-Korean meeting to discuss ways of reunifying the peninsula "independent of foreign intervention." North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly Vice President Yang Hyong-sop, speaking to a joint conference of government, party and civilian representatives, says the meeting could be held in Pyongyang, Seoul, Mount Geumgang or any place agreed upon by the two sides.

2014 -- China opens a memorial hall honoring Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun in Harbin Station, Harbin. Ahn shot dead Hirobumi Ito, the first Japanese governor-general of Korea, in the Chinese city in October 1909 prior to the beginning of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Ahn was executed at a Japanese prison in the northern Chinese city of Ryojun, now called Lushun, in 1910.

2015 -- South Korea and Japan hold talks on Tokyo's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, one of the most knotty issues for bilateral ties, without producing a breakthrough.

2020 -- Shin Kyuk-ho, founder and honorary chairman of South Korea's retail giant Lotte Group, dies of a chronic illness at the age of 99.

2021 -- A special prosecution team officially wraps up a 14-month probe into the 2014 sinking of the ferry Sewol that killed more than 300 people, mostly teenagers.
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